Taliban celebrate as last US troops leave

There was a mixture of triumph and elation on the one side as the Taliban celebrated their victory, and fear on the other.

The Taliban celebrated their victory over the United States on Tuesday, firing guns into the air, parading coffins draped in US and Nato flags and setting about enforcing their rule after the last US troops withdrew from a shattered Afghanistan.

The group now control more territory than when they last ruled before they were driven out in America’s longest war, which took the lives of nearly 2,500 US troops and an estimated 240,000 Afghans, and cost some $2 trillion.

“We are proud of these moments, that we liberated our country from a great power,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said at Kabul airport after a C-17 aircraft took the last troops out a minute before midnight, ending a hasty and humiliating exit for Washington and its Nato allies.

There was a mixture of triumph and elation on the one side as the Taliban celebrated their victory, and fear on the other.

While crowds lined the streets of the eastern city of Khost for a fake funeral with coffins draped with Western flags, long lines formed in Kabul outside banks shuttered since the fall of the capital.